Basic Python Questions - Oct. 31, 2013

[rusi]

On Thursday, October 31, 2013 4:08:48 PM UTC+5:30, E.D.G. wrote:
> Posted by E.D.G. October 31, 2013

> Hi Chris,

>        Thanks for the responses. Several of my questions were answered.

>        The calculation speed question just involves relatively
> simple math such as multiplications and divisions and trig
> calculations such as sin and tan etc. Presently I am using Perl to
> do those types of calculations. And I am starting to run into
> problems with how long it takes Perl to do thousands and even
> millions of calculations like that even though they are relatively
> simple.

If raw machine performance is your main concern, python will likely
not will prizes*

Not sure what will… you may look at Julia: http://julialang.org/

Some extracts from there:
--------------------
Julia is a dynamic language in the tradition of Lisp, Perl, Python and
Ruby. It aims to advance expressiveness and convenience for scientific
and technical computing beyond that of environments like Matlab and
NumPy, while simultaneously closing the performance gap with compiled
languages like C, C++, Fortran and Java.

Most high-performance dynamic language implementations have taken an
existing interpreted language and worked to accelerate its
execution. In creating Julia, we have reconsidered the basic language
design, taking into account the capabilities of modern JIT compilers
and the specific needs of technical computing. Our design includes:

- Multiple dispatch as the core language paradigm.  
- Exposing a sophisticated type system including parametric dependent types.
- Dynamic type inference to generate fast code from programs with no
declarations.
- Aggressive specialization of generated code for types encountered at run-time.

Julia feels light and natural for data exploration and algorithm
prototyping, but has performance that lets you deploy your prototypes.


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* Considering my recent posts "treat python as a given", Im not being consistent. Must be getting senile :D